


molten gold

by noyabeans (snowdrops)



Series: writing with snowdrops (haikyuu) [4]
Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Character Study, Gen, M/M, Manga Spoilers, Shippy Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-10
Updated: 2017-10-10
Packaged: 2019-01-15 15:50:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 791
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12324105
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/snowdrops/pseuds/noyabeans
Summary: From the sidelines, Chikara contemplates Nishinoya Yuu. Contains spoilers for the current manga arc, up to chapter 270.Nishinoya, Chikara thinks, is much more complex than he makes himself out to be, and than what the world would like to think of him.





	molten gold

**Author's Note:**

> Contains spoilers for the current manga arc, specifically the events of chapter 270. As of chapter 271 it has slightly deviated from canon events.
> 
> Happy birthday, Nishinoya Yuu ❤  
>  Thank you for being such a huge inspiration to me, even after so long.

Inarizaki’s number seven drapes confidence across his shoulders, wears it like a cloak that billows around him as he takes one, two, three, four steps back from the serving line, paces sure and steady. He’s smirking, but there is no humour in the gaze he levels Nishinoya, and Nishinoya -

is unmoving in the motion of the court. There is tension set in the line of Nishinoya’s shoulders, but stubbornness is written in the slant of his jaw. His arms are outstretched, as though embracing the proffered challenge. If Chikara were to be in front of Nishinoya now, he knows that he will find himself looking into molten gold, a raging blaze in the guise of smouldering flames. It’s what Nishinoya does, Chikara has long come to understand: where others might falter, Nishinoya is bold and unwavering.

The whistle blows. Chikara watches the ball - it rises, dips, and connects with Miya’s palm. Then it soars, yellow-blue unspinning across the net, hurtling straight to Nishinoya. A yell ripples from around Chikara, the stands exploding with manic noise, but the cacophony is drowned out as the ball goes up, its course awry, and Chikara doesn’t miss the way that Nishinoya’s jaw clenches, can feel the frustration that rolls off Nishinoya’s frame like a volcano on the brink of eruption.

If they earn this point, Chikara thinks, Nishinoya will punish himself ten times over once the match ends. For all that he tries to brush the nickname off, Nishinoya does truly see himself as Karasuno's guardian deity, and Chikara cannot help but fear that the weight of those failures he hangs around his neck as medals of his shortcomings might only serve to choke him. But if the point is to be earned in this way, if only to break Inarizaki’s streak and return some control to Karasuno, Chikara wonders if it might be a necessary evil at the expense of Nishinoya’s own pride, a tarnish on the burnished shield he wields in the team's defence.

Then the ball falls on Karasuno’s court, and it feels like a reset, even as the figure on the scoreboard increases, drawing the point difference even wider.

Four consecutive serves is uncharted territory, a streak that neither Shiratorizawa nor Aobajousai had achieved, a reminder that this isn't prefecturals anymore; this is _Nationals_ , and the few metres between the substitution box and the court have never seemed as unbreachable as they do now. Nishinoya bends down, heaves a deep breath - and then he looks straight at Miya, shoulders squared, blazing flames once again tamped to a simmer.

Daichi says something to Nishinoya, and is answered with the vaguest hint of a nod, a barely-there tilt of the head, but Nishinoya's eyes never leave his opponent. Chikara wonders what Daichi is saying, and in a fleeting moment of tangential thought he wonders: one year from now, if this were to happen, what would he say? What can he say to someone who has always been guarding their backs, but has never let anyone else guard his own?

It is only then, lost in his own ruminations, that Chikara becomes uncomfortably aware of the silence that has settled itself across the court. It feels foreign, like a thick, suffocating cloak. To think that the chaos that usually accompanies Nishinoya’s presence would be missed.

As he watches Nishinoya brace himself for the oncoming serve, unnervingly quiet, Chikara wonders why he'd ever thought otherwise of Nishinoya; because despite everything - loud hollers through classroom windows, frantic footsteps thundering down school corridors, calls made in the dead of night, their voices far too loud for the slumbering city outside, yet too soft and far apart through the telephone - Nishinoya's silence has always spoken volumes. Chikara knows this better than anyone. It might be months past now, but the memory of Nishinoya's voice, laced with a strange, steely confidence and pride, carrying on the entrails of a hastily thought-out contingency plan still remains seared in Chikara's mind. The mere recollection of it ignites a spark deep in his chest that he does not quite know what to make sense of.

Nishinoya, Chikara thinks, is much more complex than he makes himself out to be, and than what the world would like to think of him.

When the ball flies, nobody on Karasuno so much as flinches. And it is at the moment when Nishinoya receives it, overhead curving in a perfect arc, that Chikara realises: there is much to say of the weight of responsibility when the trust of a team rests on shoulders as slight as Nishinoya's. But in fact there is nothing much to say at all, when those shoulders that have been tempered with fire are more than capable of holding its weight.

**fin**

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you [Lark](https://archiveofourown.org/users/themorninglark) for all the advice, [Ewa](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ewagan) for betaing and [Tsucchi](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tsucchi) for cheering me on! 
> 
> [tumblr (rielity)](https://rielity.tumblr.com/) | [twitter (noyabeans)](https://twitter.com/noyabeans) | [haikyuu writing journal](https://noyabeans.dreamwidth.org/)


End file.
